Each Saturday, David Brenner of Villasfor2 in Abruzzo selects a delicious, top-value 'Everyday Italian Wine' for you to try at home or enjoy on your Abruzzo vacation !

'Maestri Cantinieri'. Gruppo Caldirola
Here's a bottle of Italian red wine that costs €1. No airs, graces or pretensions - this is everyday plonk at its most basic. Is it drinkable ? Is it a bargain ? Or is it the kind of wine that if you were a real cheapskate you'd take to a party and drink something else ? And how curious are you to find out - because, let's be honest, we've all seen this stuff on our holidays and have secretly wondered whether the merest sip will make you go blind, or whether it's really an authentic taste of what Italians themselves would regard as a good, honest everyday wine for home drinking.

This isn't DOC (ha !) or IGT (ditto), but simple 'Vino da Tavola' - the wine that'll arrive in a litre jug if you ask for 'vino rosso alla spina' in a modest local restaurant. And that's the yardstick by which you need to judge this.

Is it an undiscovered jewel ? No. Is it drinkable ? Yes. Would I want to drink it on its own ? No. Did it go OK with food ? Yes - pasta with ragu. So far so good, but when the questions get a little more searching, the answers get a little trickier.

Would I avoid a restaurant if I knew this was the 'house red' ? Don't think so. Would I buy more of this wine to drink at home - or offer it you you as our Villasfor2 house red ? Don't think so. What does it actually taste like ? Ah - I was wondering when you'd ask that…

For a start, forget about 'bouquet', 'body' and 'finish'. This is a bottle of wine costing €1, not Chateau Lafite. It's a deep garnet colour in the glass; first impression when you take a sip isn't that bad. Dry. Quite tannic. A little harsh, but with a bit more punch than you'd expect from a wine of only 10.5%. It drinks just fine with with robustly-flavoured food. 

Though the producers - Gruppo Caldirola - are in Verona and their bottling plant for this wine is in the outskirts of that notable wine-producing area of Milan, there is absolutely no way of knowing where this wine's from - save that it's somewhere in Italy. An educated guess would be Puglia. Why ? This wine is devoid of any of the thin sourness that unripe grapes produce. The grapes that went into this at least had the benefit of hot sun - probably somewhere in Puglia's vast vino da tavola vineyards.

Worth a shot ? Sure. But consider this. For €2, you can buy two bottles of 'Maestri Cantinieri' - or one bottle of something much better. Quantity vs Quality. That age-old conundrum. Your call !

At A Glance…

• This week's featured wine: 'Maestri Cantinieri'
• Producer: Gruppo Caldirola
• Designation: Vino da Tavola
• Strength: 10.5%
• Closure: Plastic cork
• This bottle cost: €1 (at Auchan in Pescara, if you're curious !)

Click on the pictures above for larger images - and if you like Italian wine, why not check out last week's 'Everyday Italian Wine' and bookmark this site for future weekly posts.

Next week: A real treat. A brand new, top-of-the-range white wine from nearby Cantina Miglianico. It's very definitely one you'll want to try at home and on your Villasfor2 Abruzzo vacation ! 

Abruzzo vacation, Everyday Italian Wine, Villasfor2

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under David's 'Everyday Italian Wine', Eating and Drinking, Vineyards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.